If you hate it so much...

[j4]

Really, this has to be one of the most depressing threads I've read since internet discussion forums were invented.

In other news, this morning as I was on my bike, waiting to turn right on to the Botley Road, a bloke leaned out of the window of a passing car and bellowed at me, just a huge animal roar, a shaggy head hanging right out of the window to shout better. It was loud and close and sudden enough that it made me jump (though hopefully not visibly, and certainly not enough to make me fall off a stationary bicycle). Why do people do this? I just don't understand. I grok the getting-a-reaction thing, but they were gone too fast to see a reaction (though I suppose I could have shaken my fist at them as the car sped off). And no, "because they're idiots" is not an answer; the world is full of idiots and not all of them bellow at people out of car windows.

It feels as though the world has got a lot more hostile, more aggressive and bristly and jostly. More people shouting and swearing over the tiniest thing. From an accidental jolt in a crowd to "fucking fuck you" in the space of a second; rights and rants and heaps of hate. I don't want to overdramatise it, I don't want to speculate about causes, I'm not taking a holiday to Daily Mail Island, but sometimes it feels like the world's awash in misery and stupidity and violence, and any way to retreat from it feels like escapism, and there is absolutely no way to change it or fight it or lessen it. Has it always been like this? Have I only just noticed?

And 'having my say' here is probably part of the problem, or at least it's certainly not part of the solution.

Comments

[pjc50.livejournal.com]

Not so much ignored as treated like animals - that is, represented politically mostly by older, middle class women who don't have to go near them but hold a romanticised view of their lives largely gleaned from TV, plus a small group of unhinged bomb-throwing revolutionaries. (Yes, I have been reading Polly Toynbee lately)

What makes you think that everyone would be better served by more class warfare (70's vide) rather than more unity, or at least a social continuum, as in the original Bevinist vision?

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

I doubt that we would be better served by class warfare; however I am defeated by my dismal view of human nature and the ugly fact that the social continuum is a fantasy.

We not only an unequal society, our schools are reinforcing a society of divisions - not a continual variation - and it is only a matter of time before a histogram of educational achievement is as clearly bimodal as that of Brazil OR Louisiana.

Further, I believe that we are fundamentally tribal, and a 'class' of people define themselves by their rejection of the middle-class aspirations and repect for education; just as firmly, if not more so, as all too many of the middle classes define themselves by accent, manners, and a desire that Tarquin and Miranda shouldn't play with nasty children from the sink estate.

Such divisions tend to worsen in times of economic stress. Including mass immigration - and it's not just unemployed labourers who feel that their jobs have been taken by foreigners; just listen to the managerial classes disdain for lazy English school leavers and the usefulness of Polish labour: partly true, perhaps, but not so true as to mask the ugly prejudices.

Pessimist? Moi?